This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage companies execute faster and cheaper. Check out his linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenleaver/
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
I was chatting about this with a friend yesterday. We were both in Lazada together some years back and were both product managers.
But we’d also done a number of entepreneurial endeavors both before and after Lazada.
I always considered him a very good PM because he very much focused on getting things done. He took an entrepreneur’s mindset into being a PM.
When you’re an entrepreneur you don’t do things for how they ‘look to others’. Because there is no point. It’s your business and you don’t really give a shit how things ‘look’.
Rather what counts is getting results and getting them fast.
And as I think about who i consider the strong PM’s that i worked with in the past decade… it is pretty consistent that the ones I consider the strongest were the ones that either had started businesses before or started them after. And had an entrepreneurial mindset.
And the PM’s that i personally consider the weakest were the ones that to this day have never created a business and probably never even considered trying. Because they have a ‘salary mindset’.
Now let me explain.
What is a ‘salary mindset’?
This is when someone’s internal train of thought is… “I work because someone pays me money.” And therefore I optimize for continuing to get paid and trying to get paid more.
This is different from optimizing for ‘results’. Because the two might even be at odds.
Let me give an example.
I know a few people in my past career who i consider to have a clear ‘salary mindset’. They optimized for getting on their boss’s good side, regardless if this meant it was the wrong thing for the company.
If the boss likes it.. they do it.
Might be a stupid project that has no chance at moving the needle… but if the boss wants it… they jump on it.
Because they’re optimizing for what is good for them. And if their boss is happy than they have better job security.
How is an ‘entpreneurial mindset’ PM different?
A PM that is an entrepreneur at heart really cares about building something that gets results. And this is what they optimize for, regardless of whether it is what makes them popular or not.
It also means that they will not waste their time on things that have little chance of moving the needle… even if it is viewed favorably by the ‘boss’.
I like to call this the ‘tendency to not want to do useless shit.’
And with the ‘salary mindset’ folks… they clearly lack it. They will do useless shit at the drop of a dime if the boss likes it.
Because they know that their entire existence is based on remaining employed. They cannot create value on their own.
Make them fend for themselves in this world and they are like a fish out of water. They will simply flounder hoping that someone saves them.
What happens as the PM market contracts?
I heard on a podcast recently that the number of job posts for product management roles contracted by about 90% in the US.
There are unemployed PM’s all over the place. In part because it had gotten too saturated in the ~5 years before that.
Every newly minted MBA since about 2017 seems to want to have become a product manager. It had surpassed previous glorious roles like strategy consultants and investment bankers in ‘sexiness’ for awhile.
Anyway as the number of PM roles contracts.. you start to see clearly which camp folks are in.
The ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ PM’s often get involved in starting a company. Or they pivot to a different type of role entirely… eg. a commercial or operations one.
Whereas the ‘salary mindset’ PM will double down on finding a job. Even if the job is a horrible fit.
And then when that job doesn’t work out, they will try to find another one. And so on.
They continue to job hop like a game of hot potato…. in the hopes that when the music stops they still have a seat.
Pick entrepreneurs as your PM’s
I like watching Lenny’s podcast. He interviews a lot of prominent product leaders.
And one of the questions that Lenny typically asks everyone is… “What is your favorite interview question?”
So I’d like to add my own answer to this question. My favorite question to a potential PM hire is… “Have you started a company?”
And if the person answers ‘no’… I’d most likely rule them out.
Why? Because the job market is flooded with PM’s and there are plenty that actually have started a business of some sort. And therefore demonstrated that they have some ‘entrepeneurial chops’.
Which in turn means that they have had at least one experience in their life where they did something not merely to make a salary… but rather because they truly wanted to build something.
And product people absolutely need to be builders at heart.
If they only build when someone pays them to do it… then that to me is major red flag.
They can go work for some fat corporate… where there are armies of people who work for the mere purpose of earning a salary.
Closing thoughts
If you’re an early stage startup looking to hire your first PM…. I always say to look for an entrepreneur who knows something about product management.
Rather than simply hiring someone with PM experience.
Because you want the person to think outside the lines. Maybe what you need to build is not purely tech.
You don’t want the person to just throw up their arms and say… “Sorry… my job is writing specifications and managing dev sprints. I don’t do that.”
Rather you want a person who rolls up their sleeves and does whatever needs to get done. And in my experience that is much more likely to be the PM with the ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ rather than the ‘salary’ one.
